


Hands flying away

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Pre Canon, and it was a force bond (oh my god it was a force bond), minor animal death, more shippy in the parallel sense then actually contact romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27095557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which they’re lonely, hungry, and apart
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Hands flying away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deceptigeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deceptigeek/gifts).



> Ta-da I finally finished this for you, away from any originally intended gift giving holiday whoops

Ben has never been truly hungry in his life, not even neglected and alone at home. Not when courier droids would drop off more fresh groceries than he could eat, twice a month . The order meant for a house of three feeding only one. By the time he’s been sent to Luke’s rainy correction school for wayward Jedi in the making it would never be a problem. Other students would pour over the notes on tracking and trapping, or check each other’s weapons, practicing their aim before heading off to hunt (as Luke believed everyone should learn to shoot lightsaber or no).  
He did listen to the lectures on surviving Luke gave and remembered them all because despite his faults Ben did his best to be a good student. He practiced at the small target range made of rocks and debris. Helped set it up.

He just never needed to use what he learned there, because while the other students went trampling around the high altitude scrub and down to forest that poked its way out just below the harsh rock they lived on he would sit on a cliffside and meditate. The birds native to the area would flock around him soon, short winged and singing. They’d lead him to their well hidden nests in the spring, waiting patiently cooing while he stole their eggs. The rest of the year they’d dash themselves against the rock until their necks broke and enough bodies where piled up to last him a while. When he ran out of food they’d start doing it all over again.

—

On the other end of nowhere, Rey stares at an imposingly burly offworlder’s lunch. She’d be drooling at it if that wouldn’t waste water. 

She is used to being hungry, though she wasn’t always. When she first got here it sliced at the soft skin of her stomach impossibly sharp. Now it gnaws like an insect. Persistent, potentially deadly.

The trader notices her staring, their little corner while they wait for Plutt is isolated enough from the rest of the market she sticks out. Even halfway hidden behind a wrecked speeder as she is. They shift slightly, reaching behind and Rey prepares to dart away should it be a blaster they’re reaching for. It’s not. A sealed bottle of something liquid-dusty and blue. They jam it down in the sand and shuffle back a bit. Waiting a moment then pointing their chin at it with a bite to their jerky.

“S’for you.”

There’s a bark to their voice, a canine outer rim accent in rough Basic. Rey is sure she could pin point where if they talked more. If she asked. But she doesn’t, she’s more interested in the bottle, creeping up to snatch it and step back a bit. Still in the shade of their tarpaulin, with enough room to run if needed. She drops to the cooler sand, cricket thin limbs folded like a spring. Rey cracks the seal with her teeth and sips cautiously, then like it’ll evaporate if she doesn’t drink it immediately. The trader finishes off their paper wrapped food and brushes their trousers and skirt layers out. Plutt is calling a gurgling name, it must be theirs. Rey recognizes the look in their eyes. Feels it somehow. If she stayed here when they came back they’d offer to take her off world. They easy sink of their steps says if not from Jakku, this particular planet says they’re used to the burning desert. Not a slave trader who sweats and wilts under the sun but a junkrunner, sympathetic. They’d take her off and feed her and she could grow up in the softer danger of the void. Her parents won’t find her there. Rey smiles awkward thanks when they glance back and nows as soon as they cross that bank shes scuttling off. She checks the paper first, weighed down by a clump of unidentifiable organics. Not taste to it but edible. She stuffs it in one cheek, takes the bottle and paper too.

Its not uncommon. There’s not a lot of children here. The few around are well looked after, by the standards of Jakku. Starving grubby things that are given the scraps spared by travellers or people who remembered their harsh youth, the friends they’d lost to it. Pushes in the paths of pilots who might take sympathy, or want a small pair of hands. Anything better than this. They band together on Jakku, it’s either find someone you can trust with your back and lie spine to spine shivering, someone who you can cut the fortune of crumbs and another day’s survival in two with. Find them or die. Or be Rey. Rey who’s certainly sharp enough and young enough to worm her way into a gang. Rey who doesn’t, drifting in and out with salvage to sell and hiding far away from the shelter of numbers. 

She’s not sure when the help will fade, when the offer of leaving will finally stop tempting her. Beyond calls though, calls her to the sky and past it and she drowns it in work, in flight simulators and imperial repair manuels. Tries to starve it from her by avoiding the crowds of potential.


End file.
